About the book: 2002 / The Academy was not born on Terminus. She was born in the very center of the Empire, on Trentor, on the day when Gary Seldon's brilliant performance in court turned the tide of events, sending it along the tracks laid out by psychohistory. This is the starting point. Fact. But, besides the fact, you always want details... Three leading American science fiction writers decided to tell in detail about Gary Seldon. It fell to Gregory Benford to tell about his past, to Greg Beer about the present, to David Brin about the future. The collapse of the great Galactic Empire, exciting journeys through virtual worlds, meetings with heretical robots and a half-mad mentality of incredible power and other incredible adventures in the vastness of the Universe created by the talent of the great Isaac Asimov!